Tag Archives: Apophis

You have the power to make a whole lot of cash on the stock market! Simply buy shares in companies who specialise in pulping books – as there are a whole load of apocalyptic 2012 pseudo-Mayan pseudo-prophecy type titles which are now no longer hilariously out of date. And, need I remind you that my record in giving out stock market tips is currently 100% (i.e. one out of one) !

However before we rest easy and for once in human history concentrate on living in the moment for a change, we must beware: not necessarily of the End of the World itself, but because the streets and fields will henceforth be filled with vast numbers of strange people shambling aimlessly, attempting to suck the life out of all right-thinking people. I’m not talking about Zombies – I’m talking about Millenarians in search of an Apocalypse. Although I might as well be talking about Zombies, but that is by the by.

The point is, though, that as I first became aware of the Y2K phenomenon many years ago, I perceived that there was a large class of people who were actually looking forward to the end of the world, not with any appreciable joy but out of pure Masochism – and not in the nice sense either, but in the Freudian. Then of course when the Y2K phenomenon did not happen, the same people transferred their hopes of the world’s imminent cataclysmic destruction to the purported end of the Mayan long-count calendar in 2012.

I therefore deduced that there are certain people who are never happy in this world unless they think it is ending. And this was before I had ever heard of Norman Cohn’s book The Pursuit of the Millennium which basically says hey, this has been happening since at least the middle ages.

Behold Apophis, bringer of destruction to mankind! Possibly.

Now I could hope that these Millenarians will finally get over themselves, but that would be to blatantly ignore the effects of Cognitive Dissonance. I am therefore going to predict that these people will transfer their attention to a brand new apocalyptic frenzy, and moreover I am willing to bet (if I can find an amenable bookmaker that is) that the “next big thing” will be 2036.According to a report in today’s Daily Telegraph, an asteroid named Apophis will make a near miss today … but will circle back round and might hit our planet in twenty three years time. If it does hit, it is conservatively estimated there will be an explosion with the equivalent of a least 500 megatonnes of TNT, or to put it another way, ten very large Hydrogen bombs. Nice.

Apophis was apparently so named because of the villain in Stargate. Now let us assume for one moment Apophis does come around and heads directly toward us in 2036. We can bet that there will be a space mission launched to make some sort of token effort to avert doomsday – so it will be interesting to see what it is called. If the people in charge at Mission Command know their Golden Dawn, it will obviously be called Osiris. If they are more classical scholars it will probably be called Ra, although if they are fans of Kenneth Grant they will probably opt for Set.